Here's twitch if you want to see me get my ass kicked in Nioh today: www.twitch.tv/andersonjph Here's the first part of the playthrough I streamed of Hob if you want to see that: ruclips.net/video/5zdWoNQniUo/видео.html I feel bad about Hob. It's a shame. I think some people still really enjoyed this game which is saying a lot. Super Mario Odyssey is next.
If I remember correctly, I believe he is planning on playing and making a review for HZD after the longer Odyssey and Automata reviews and any shorter 'filler' reviews like possibly one for Hyper-Light Drifter.
One minor point I would like to correct is that the game does have a lock-on function. When using a controller you press down the left analog stick to lock onto enemies that are close to you. Not sure which button it is on the keyboard.
This makes me kind of sad. It really looks like at least some of the team tried as hard as possible to build something beautiful but nobody could polish the mechanics in the end.
Seems to be all too common these days. Lots of games being cancelled,incompleteted and studios being shut down. The gaming industry seems to be struggling and theirs so much competition.
I wonder if it's all fixed now. Because it's just been released in Switch, and I'm interested in buying it, but only if the bugs are all fixed. It's been a few years so you'd think so.
"The game that could have been." Easily the greatest object of my sympathy and melancholy in games. Whenever I see something and feel what the devs wanted to do, end up being dragged along in their passion, only to see the game not living up to its potential for some reason or another, it breaks my heart. People really want these titles to be something special. People really have great visions for them, and as an enthusiast amateur dev myself that kind of thing really gets to me. I remember ranting and raving about Rise of Legends deserving more attention and more development time than it got until my friends started rolling their eyes in preparation of the oncoming speech whenever the subject came up. Here's to what could have been, Hob!
Joe has a very dry sense of humor. It is funny because it is clearly and intentionally absurd. He is making all of these intricate and very serious points about the nature of the game and the lost potential, but he is sarcastically acting like the lack of an ambient audio slider is just as important. It would be ridiculous for him to actually be as upset about it as he is pretending to be, thus humor ensues.
Like Joseph said, Runic Games was shut down because its parent company, Perfect World Entertainment, decided to just abandon single player games and focus entirely on MMORPGS because mircotransactions makes so much more money.
Sadly, if the company you work for only cares about making as much money as possible, and you want to make something special, you're probably not going to be one of its top performers. Hopefully the staff at Runic can find jobs at some company whose management has more ambitious goals. Incidentally, I feel exactly the same way about Valve, even though they haven't lost all their staff yet.
It's not like they suddenly decided it, they never did any other kind of games. Look at their portfolio, a dozen of some local mmorpgs, several each year. Which begs the question: why did the company that only wants to produce cash cow online games bought a single player--oriented company like Runic in the first place?
newcomers, after Hob's free retail from Epic Games Store, i'm here to tell you that the bugs are vastly gone. nowhere near what we see in this video, at least. other critique still apply. i've finished it twice just now and Janderson makes great points that i agree. i'd actually love to hear from him more of his perspective of the ending scenes and the lore caves (answer if you please, J). in my mind the alien queen could have said at least three different narratives, and the devs purposefully had it muted to broaden discussion and flex our judgements. granted it's also the convenient choice for them. bonus tip: keyboard and mouse are a bit lame on this game, since it was built with joysticks in minds and hands. some jumps become easier with an usb-controller. if you, like me, have a generic cheap one, i advise you add Hob to your non Steam games, with Big Picture and all. if needed, i recommend x360ce as an emulator, easy to install and run. feel free to hit questions if in need.
I have to wonder if the patches Panic Button made to the game as part of the Switch port's Definitive Edition also made it to the EGS release, since it came out not long after the Switch version. I don't find either studio credited there, just Gearbox. It doesn't seem like the Steam version has been updated since 2017, though.
I've played this on the switch with no issues recently and it's easily one of my favourite games from an artistic perspective. I say it's worth buying and playing for the experience now, is assume most of these issues have been resolved.
Man, this critique really makes me sad on a personal level. Why? You clearly can't deny the issues mentioned, but I had literally zero problems in my playthrough, resulting in one of my favorite experiences this year. The game felt incredibly polished to me, from the incredibly satisfying sounds, combat and animations to the fantastic level design. Interesting and kind of frustrating how this perception can drastically vary. The theme of healing and environmental care really resonated with me and the game became a warm blanket I eagerly returned to every day when I played it, because it is just so calm and satisfying to explore. Many people will never touch this game now because they think it is a buggy mess but it is really a game worth playing and full of heart.
For you it was, if the majority* experience game ruining bugs, it's his duty to report on that, and no one should be shafted by a broken product they paid for. I'm glad you enjoyed it however.
I had issues with glitches but they were no where near as bad as Anderson's. The game is currently sitting at a 89% recommended on Steam. If those glitches were the majority i'd be way lower.
it's also been patched a bunch since janderson's playthroughs. i only experienced a few visual glitches during my playthrough over the last couple of days.
I have no plan to play this game but it really looks like to have some great ideas. Given proper development it has the potential to be a masterpiece. What a shame.
I don't want to discredit Josephs review, some of those bugs were seriously annoying just by seeing them on video but I cannot say I share his experience. I played through the game to completion (100%) which took me like 12 hours and I only ever encountered a single obvious bug, the one with the fish following you around. No teleporting enemies, no (unintentionally) unresponsive buttons, no missing ladders, nothing. Now I know that may not mean much but I really feel like he got the short end of the stick.
Play it!! Finished this year 2020, the only bug I encountered is on 12:07 on this video, I just ignored that and kept playing withtout any issue. This game is wonderfull
Kinda not sure why you used "It's like Zelda" in the title tho... it makes a interesting point at the beginning but became irrelevant to the topic 2 minutes into the video
It's still relevant but he doesn't have to remind us of the connection. He's already pointed it out and continues on with similarities through out his praise. He used it as a good opening and left it up to the audience to continue to draw connections to. If you rewatch it while comparing what he's saying to how Zelda handled it you'll see the connection continues.
In the playthrough he repeatedly stated, that people who had recommended this game to him unanimously have been claimingd that 'It's like Zelda', therefore Joseph's first time through the game was defined by this angle - He's been looking for similarities and differences between these two titles.
Wow, this was abit of a downer. But I think it needed to be. The disparity between the game that could have been and what is is huge, and a great shame that it will likely never be recovered.
I mean ... there are glitches, but this is Joseph Anderson. He critiques and his videos are mostly nothing but critique. He didn't focus on the positives nearly as much. It sounds way worse than it is because ... it's a critique. It's not meant to be balanced. It's honestly a pretty great game. I'd give it a 8-8.5, I think a lot of the criticism is unjustified, or justified but very hyperbolic. And this is coming from a Joseph fanboy. I never ran into Joseph's glitches thank god. I will say that after reflecting on the game more, the problem was more so the boring combat and repetitive puzzles. But a lot of the puzzles are great, music is great, graphics are great. It's the kind of game that just gets a little worse near the end, but so do a lot of games. It's a great game still and I'd recommend it.
I mean, I got a lot of positives during the above video. Stuff about how involved the world changing is, the cleverness of the resulting level design, the *potential* depth of the combat mechanics (tho not realised) and he did say that the puzzles and secrets were the strongest aspect of the game. The only positive I see omitted is graphics+music, and the former at least can speak for themselves to show if you would like them or not.
Yeah lol I just edited that comment because what I meant is he didn't *focus on the positives as much as the negatives, not that he didn't state them. Which is fine because it's a *critique* but it does make it seem like a much worse game than it is. I just felt like throwing my hat in because I see a lot of people talking about the game as if it had failed, but as someone who went in blind I don't really think it did. It had a decent amount of missteps, but it's pretty great.
What ever language you speak, as a native English speaker from the USA who has lived in close proximity or within a Spanish speaking country, The only Spanish I ever learned was to order food from restaurants or day to day conversation. You know more than enough to communicate to English speakers.
10:15 That's what happened! I SWEAR I drug that box all the way to the square the first time I encountered it, then when nothing happened I wrote it off as a "oh this was just an optional side-path", got the extra collectible in this room and went on with my life. Except that resulted in like 20 minutes of not knowing what to do until I inevitably went back down there to test my assumptions and lo and behold, the elevator activated. Something like that could have been very easily fixed with better colors on that platform to convey that it's actually a switch. I count myself lucky that I didn't encounter as many awful bugs as you did, but they were there. 15:10 is another one I SORT of encountered, but when I encountered it I actually tried to jump off there, but got the same effect of no animation and just a respawn. That spot is just weird I guess? I also had some terrible stuttering that seemed to be endemic among 10xx series nVidia owners. It's hard to say of my opinion of Hob would be more negative if I ran into more of these issues, but based on my experience, Hob is definitely worth a play, even if only for just the feeling of wonder that you mentioned in the beginning.
That's fair. I still think there are enough parallels between those, that if anything, games journalists can learn a few things from what Joe is doing.
The only example of an actual game journalist I know of is some of Kotaku's writers (Jason Schreier comes to mind) and George Weidman aka Super Bunnyhop (highly recommend his channel on RUclips).
@@Rickbearcat yes and that's what journalism is. Or what it often is. Journalism doesn't just mean reporting the latest news or doing reviews on the latest games. It can also mean doing editorials, analyses of historical events or when it comes to games analyses of older games. It can be a far more sweeping thing like an entire book on the history of something, or about Al particular scientific topic perhaps. What Joseph is doing is absolutely games journalism. And there's quite a few great journalists doing the same thing to a similar quality level on RUclips, such as Super Bunnyhop which Joseph has said in other videos that he is a fan of.
Huh, I personally loved Hob, and I must be EXTREMELY lucky, because I have experienced none of this. I really don't know how the planets aligned to give you the worst time, haha
@@Mixu. I think Panic Button patched issues when porting it to Switch. This would not influence the Steam version, which hasn't been updated since 2017. The EGS version might be using the patches from the Switch version; I'm not sure.
Great review. Just got finished playing through Hob today (28.01.18) and thankfully, it seems like almost all of these bugs have been fixed. At least I never encountered a bug that would prevent me from progressing through the game. The popping in and out of environmental objects and enemy models is also something I never noticed. It's an amazing game now that it plays right!
I truly love the way you look at gameplay, story and the problems, strengths, etc. This is now my go to channel for if I want to try something out or not. Looking forward to more.
I can tell you how great your content is. I am used to just jump to the middle of the video and finish it from there. Your videos.. after doing the same thing, i jump to the very begining and watch the whole thing AGAIN.
"... or even an ambienr sound slider." Joe you gotta know that some things are wishful thinking, at best. Keep ideas like that on the downlow or they will call you crazy.
Pixel art can be good or bad. Sadly, while the 8 and 16 bit era tried to make the most of their limited ressources I feel many modern pixel art games just try to do as little as possible and call it stylized.
Aside from randomly dying once, I played through this on the PC and PS4 and never had any of the bugs you had. Just frame drops and crashes before they patched it. I found the combat wasn't the greatest or all that deep but was still much better than the majority of games these days.
Man runic games was great, and this caught me so off guard and I was so sad with how it all ended. I remember TotalBiscuits coverage of Torchlight 1/2 and I remember being so hyped for T2, playing with friends and by myself for hours and hours and modding the game... Needless to say I was excited for this new project and I was very sad how the game didn't seem finished and how Runic died right after it. Rest in peace, you'll always have a place in my heart
I'm heartbroken that Runic shut down. I was frustrated by the issues that Hob has, but I'm in love with the world they created for Torchlight and Hob. I want more from this universe, and I doubt I'm ever going to get that.
My personal subtitle for Hob is "ok, what there fuck did that do?" I said that after like 50% of the switches I flipped, not because I couldn't see what the switch did exactly, but because I had trouble understanding the ramifications of each change I made to the environment. This all clicked for me around the time I finished the reservoir, but that's like halfway through the game. I'm not sure if that's a flaw or not. It's just something I noticed. I do have one big problem with the game and that's that it's really linear. I kept trying to solve puzzle zones out of order, thinking the game was more like hollow knight than portal, especially the starting zone. I can't tell you how much time I wasted trying to purify that zone. I'd come back to it after every zone I finished, hoping one of those switches or arm upgrades would in some way help. Turns out you can't finish it until after the reservoir.
The little slide show you did of examples of the large amount of platformers released contained so many games I hold near and dear it just assaulted me with adrenaline. Hyper Light Drifter, Shovel Knight, Dead Cells, Rain World (I love this one in particular), Ori and the Blind Forest, Owlboy are the ones I recall the most.
17:40 There is lock-on while fighting. The game tells you about it, it's just a pain in the ass to trigger. I turned it on once by accident and was annoyed since it stopped me from sprinting. You do it by clicking the left stick or hitting Tab if using a keyboard. But yeah, the fact that you didn't even know speaks about how well implemented it is into the loop.
I think what you added to it regarding Runic really worked well for the video. All of the issues really made sense within the context of that framework.
You said in your stream of Hob, and presumably others, that you were worried the viewers of the streams would get bored if you just solely focused on playing the game (with minimal interaction with the chat) and commentated on your first thoughts. After watching your stream of Hob, and then this video. I can safely say that I think it's a good idea! I enjoyed hearing your first thoughts while watching the stream, and then your more refined ideas put into this video. It was a good one. Thanks very much for all the hard work!
I just played Hob myself and only encountered one of your said Bugs where an enemy was invincible in his default position. Other than that i had an amazing experience.
THANK YOU for your statement in the intro about the old-school Zelda formula. Without watching your video I made a similar argument in my analysis of Alundra, an underappreciated Zelda-like game for the PSX. Both that game and Hob seem to want to develop the ideas further rather than abandon or change them into what Zelda has become now (Dark Souls/puzzler in the style of a Ubisoft game). Both ideas are good and can be fun, but sometimes I really enjoy the old-school Zelda formula and feel a lot more could be done with that.
17:42 there actually is a lock-on in the game, it just doesn't tell you in any sort of tutorial. it is however mentioned in one(or more, i'm not sure) hint(s) which talks about lock-on combat and it is also in the controls within the options. (the default button for it is the left stick)
4,300 dollars a month from a channel with just over 200 thousand subscribers, that's fucking insane, not only is that an absurdly livable income, but it also shows how dedicated the viewers are to this channel, it takes a level of commitment for this kind of content and i appreciate the fact that so many others understand that and show it willingly in their patreon subscriptions glad you are making enough money to support you and your family now, along with being able to pursue youtube and upload more frequently, patreon has done this channel a lot of good Lots of love Joseph
I wonder what you'd think of Obduction, from Cyan Games. I mean, its yet another Myst-like, but actually made by the people who made Myst. Personally, I really liked it, and I really want to see your thoughts on it, as I loved your review of The Witness, which shares a similar feeling.
That would be because they they had the same art director, Eric A. Anderson. I don't doubt there was more cross-pollination between the two games than just the art and world design.
I enjoyed Obduction apart from the terribly designed "alien numbers" puzzle. On my playthrough I managed to brute force my way through the bridge sections without understanding entirely how they worked and ended up completely stuck in a section that didn't allow me to return to anywhere until I solved a puzzle with a very specific solution. So I couldn't go back to somewhere I could learn how to solve the puzzle unless I solved it first, which is a mind-boggling oversight. Oh, and the load times were atrocious (at least at release) and made all the teleporter style puzzles a massive pain. Also, if you haven't seen it, Matthewmatosis has a similar style of game critique and has a review of Obduction on his channel if you're interested.
Playing it again now I think most of the bugs are fixed and tho it doesn't change the core problems with the game it will always remain a great experience for me... One part because of the story of the studio and of what this game could have been and one part is the exploration of the world... I am not saying everyone should or will love it but I am saying do give it a try.. You can tell some people made it with passion
Hey Joseph, just to say I really enjoy the slower pace of your commentary delivery in recent videos; I assume this is an intentional change and, for me anyway, i find it much better. I found the pace of some your earlier commentaries a bit stressful! Great job on your work and keep it up
I've never played Hob, it's not really my genre, but my dad bought it way on sale for the Switch, and my brother played it through, Twice. He loved it, I'm not sure if many of the glitches were fixed for a switch release (though I recall once the game suddenly lost all his saves and he had to restart during his second playthrough). But I think it's, nice, that even a 'game that could have been' as you describe can be a game that *Is* to people.
23:50: "...or even an ambient sound slider." - Savage. :O Love that subtle humor. Amazing video - as always! :) And while I adore your long form videos and sometimes even sort of commented walkthroughs, I also really like this short, condensed format. And how close this critique is timewise to the release of the game, so it's relevant for the short attention span and cycle in modern media. Doing more, but shorter videos on games that gained a lot of attention/hype and are still worth a critique might be a good way forward. Saving the long form for very special games. And who knows, hopefully you'll earn enough money via Patreon and Twitch one day, that you can pay someone to do some channel work or even video editing, so you can focus on playing the games, thinking about them and writing your scripts for the critiques. You would really deserve it.
For the record, there's a bunch of top down zelda-like indie games. Ittle Dew (1 + 2) Shipwreck Oceanhorn Sword and Board. Hack N Slash Those from the top of my head.
On the glitches - I speedrunned this game for a while, and I never encountered any of the bugs featured in the video specifically. I did encounter a lot of softlocks where the trigger for an event would not happen, but that was almost always because of a sequence break.
Love your reviews. Thank you for this. Typically I have already played the games you review and I really appreciate your analysis as someone who has gone through the games. But for this Ive been on the fence on getting hob, looked great, but this critique was something I was worried about and I am really glad I just saw your video. I may pick it up on a Steam X-Mas sale or something now.
Joseph, you should defiantly give Darkwood a go. I think you would enjoy the mystery around it and give an amazing in depth review on it, especially about the lore and stuff.
This game is on my wishlist since I first saw it, but I wasn't sure if I should buy it. Four minutes in and this has convinced me that despite everything, I want to experience this world. Hope I can come back soon to finish the video! Don't want spoilers~
15:09 The dreaded death trees. I found those in mine. I got soft locked in the final boss, I killed all of the enemies and the eye switch wouldnt activate.
I agree those kinds of bugs in a game structured like this are a particularly glaring issue. If a game is going to lead you via breadcrumbs, rather than give you an idea of the larger picture, then when an event doesn't trigger you're left with nothing and no overarching path of reason to clue you in on what's going on. Game looks great and appears to play great overall though, hopefully they can iron out the issues. Edit: Whoops studio closure, never mind :(
I loved Hob. It was an amazing experience. Especially the ending. This is a game you for which you would root for a sequel. It's really sad that it didn't get a sequel. A few more boss battles would've been an interesting inclusion
I hope you will find solace in knowledge that I personaly didnt encouter ANY bugs, glitches, or crashes. Eat the whole game in only two sessions. Truly a breathtaking experience. (just start watching you, you truly have a talent to evaluate games! keep up the good work)
only honest and thorough review i’ve found on youtube. just picked up the definitive edition on switch, having never heard of the game before, and was immediately captivated...then sadly disappointed once i got to the “endgame”. you are absolutely right about the waypoints, about halfway through it’s like the game was just trying to get it all over with already, and just blazes right through to the end, rushing through the corruption-clearing, the collection of those four little orbs (which i hardly realized i had even collected, since the game gives you no context except to direct you to them), and then to the finale. it is clearly unfinished. i didn’t experience the crazier bugs you mentioned, so perhaps they were fixed to some degree, but i still experienced many minor bugs. honestly so sad because it feels like there was soooo much more planned, and the game has more than enough soul to deserve it. still enjoyable, but too bad.
Interesting how you explain the potential in Hob's approach to many different types of evasion, because a year and a half later, Sekiro seems to provide a lot of that kind of feeling with deflections, evades, and responses to various "perilous attacks".
Me: Movies are too long! I don't have patience to sit down for so much time! Also me: **spends an entire afternoon watching reviews of games I'm never going to play**
Woah. I've played hob about 5 or 6 times now, 2 of which were directly after launch, and I've even done a speedrun. I have never once encountered a bug or glitch (that I didn't make happen myself while speedrunning). That's crazy. I guess I should count myself super lucky...
Greetings Joseph! I've recently stumbled upon your videos (aka video novellas) and I am a big fan of the content. As a life-long video game enthusiast I can safely say this is something the current review industry grievously needs. Now, I realize you do much more than simply review games, but the term “review” is probably the best description I can use when comparing to what is created by the majority of the mainstream today. While I realize that not every outlet has the resources to create a 1 to 2+ game analysis on every major release (nor would I even desire this), it is safe to say the video review industry has gone in a direction that benefits game publisher and harms the end user, and yes, even the developers. More and more outlets have watered down their review material to 5 minutes or less and tend to primarily focus on the pros of a title while simultaneously failing to do more than briefly mentioning any cons, if they even do that much. This offense is so extreme in some cases that that I often find myself wondering if they are reviewing a “Game Feature” list the developers provided to them rather than playing and analyzing their own full experience with the game. I'm not sure if this is because reviewers are afraid to go against what most gamers/critics believe about a game for fear of losing viewers or if there is some deeper conspiracy involving game publishers showing up on reviewers’ doorsteps with nondescript money sacks and a legally binding contract that has 9.5/10 written into the agreement. I know the latter sounds like something from a conspiracy theorist, but it always seems like the more popular a website gets over time the easier it is for AAA companies to get near perfect scores. Many people forget that 15 years ago a perfect 10 score rarely existed on IGN. Now they're handed out like participation trophies at the Kindergarten Olympics. It goes without saying that now there is zero incentive for a publisher to allow their developers enough time and creative freedom to fix the glaring issues in future titles. Yes, I do blame the publisher over the developer because no honest game creator would want to create a shitty game. If you work on something day in and day out for years, you really want it to be good. Just imagine where we would be today if game reviewers focused primarily on the cons? I bet games today would be so incredible that there would be a “harder than life” difficulty setting and a “realer than life” graphic setting. You would probably even be able to create game review videos INSIDE the game itself. Oh, what a world that would be! Anyway, thank you for the great content! I know I could have just said that and saved you a great deal of time, but due to the length of your videos I feel you really deserve to have to read a full “feature length” comment. Whatever you do, just keep this shit coming please! 😊
17:44 "There's no lock on while fighting" That's not quite true. If you want to lock on to an enemy, it is doable by pushing down on the right analog stick if you're using a controller.
for me when I played Hob more recently the glitches and bugs that you experienced seemed to have mostly been fixed or I just didn't get them on my switch version of the game though not all as I have experienced one or two of this type. This left a whole new kind of glitch or bug for me instead, where the really weird geometry of the game ether seemed like it should have been possible when it just doesn't, or when it does let me do something in a really buggy way making me think solutions to puzzles are about climbing up a weird piece of geometry only for the next part not to work as the game didn't expect me to reach that point or just get there that early in the puzzle. There were some other weird stuff to go on with general bugs but those were the main ones I experienced.
Игры
Here's twitch if you want to see me get my ass kicked in Nioh today: www.twitch.tv/andersonjph
Here's the first part of the playthrough I streamed of Hob if you want to see that: ruclips.net/video/5zdWoNQniUo/видео.html
I feel bad about Hob. It's a shame. I think some people still really enjoyed this game which is saying a lot.
Super Mario Odyssey is next.
Joseph Anderson - Would you ever look at Horizon Zero Dawn? I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.
If I remember correctly, I believe he is planning on playing and making a review for HZD after the longer Odyssey and Automata reviews and any shorter 'filler' reviews like possibly one for Hyper-Light Drifter.
Have you considered playing through any of the dishonored games?
One minor point I would like to correct is that the game does have a lock-on function. When using a controller you press down the left analog stick to lock onto enemies that are close to you. Not sure which button it is on the keyboard.
Can’t wait to see what is and isn’t W O R T H A M O O N
This makes me kind of sad. It really looks like at least some of the team tried as hard as possible to build something beautiful but nobody could polish the mechanics in the end.
cybrox more like they ran out of money
Seems to be all too common these days. Lots of games being cancelled,incompleteted and studios being shut down. The gaming industry seems to be struggling and theirs so much competition.
I wonder if it's all fixed now. Because it's just been released in Switch, and I'm interested in buying it, but only if the bugs are all fixed. It's been a few years so you'd think so.
@@duffman18 The question in is who's published it. Is there signs of someone else properly picking it up or has the game just been quickly ported over
@@reddragon3132 it has only good reviews, so it seems like it's all fixed
"The game that could have been." Easily the greatest object of my sympathy and melancholy in games. Whenever I see something and feel what the devs wanted to do, end up being dragged along in their passion, only to see the game not living up to its potential for some reason or another, it breaks my heart. People really want these titles to be something special. People really have great visions for them, and as an enthusiast amateur dev myself that kind of thing really gets to me. I remember ranting and raving about Rise of Legends deserving more attention and more development time than it got until my friends started rolling their eyes in preparation of the oncoming speech whenever the subject came up. Here's to what could have been, Hob!
That's very sad. Runic made awesome games, but for whatever reason they were bought by one of the worst publishers.
"Or even an ambient sound slider"
The way you deadpan jokes like that gets me every time. Great stuff!
I just can't wait for the comments from people who didn't get it and don't understand why he cares about the ambient sound slider.
Haha ikr?? But uh...could you explain for my friend who doesn't get it?
How is that a joke? Explain please
Joe has a very dry sense of humor. It is funny because it is clearly and intentionally absurd. He is making all of these intricate and very serious points about the nature of the game and the lost potential, but he is sarcastically acting like the lack of an ambient audio slider is just as important. It would be ridiculous for him to actually be as upset about it as he is pretending to be, thus humor ensues.
lol, ecks dee.
You've got to admit the 'shark' looks amazing flying through the air tho
Always love seeing videos from you pop up. Also, I wonder, have you ever tried the game Rainworld and if so what were your thoughts on it?
Pfft no comments
I wonder if he's just still working on his reply:p
I hate and love how I find this literally fifteen minutes after I send Joseph Anderson an email to play Rain World
Always love seein Zalinki on videos Im discovering 3 years too late.
@@jimbobob9273 haha, a comment a month since you did something about it. Nice one, champ!
You actually sounded so genuinely heartbroken at the end that it made me sad.
Honestly, the biggest disappointment of this game was the exclusion of Calvin.
& Hobbes.
Lol 😂
Even more disappointing is the exclusion of shaw
Bruh
Heheh, I didn't see that coming.
Like Joseph said, Runic Games was shut down because its parent company, Perfect World Entertainment, decided to just abandon single player games and focus entirely on MMORPGS because mircotransactions makes so much more money.
Sadly, if the company you work for only cares about making as much money as possible, and you want to make something special, you're probably not going to be one of its top performers. Hopefully the staff at Runic can find jobs at some company whose management has more ambitious goals.
Incidentally, I feel exactly the same way about Valve, even though they haven't lost all their staff yet.
It's not like they suddenly decided it, they never did any other kind of games. Look at their portfolio, a dozen of some local mmorpgs, several each year. Which begs the question: why did the company that only wants to produce cash cow online games bought a single player--oriented company like Runic in the first place?
newcomers, after Hob's free retail from Epic Games Store, i'm here to tell you that the bugs are vastly gone. nowhere near what we see in this video, at least. other critique still apply. i've finished it twice just now and Janderson makes great points that i agree.
i'd actually love to hear from him more of his perspective of the ending scenes and the lore caves (answer if you please, J). in my mind the alien queen could have said at least three different narratives, and the devs purposefully had it muted to broaden discussion and flex our judgements. granted it's also the convenient choice for them.
bonus tip: keyboard and mouse are a bit lame on this game, since it was built with joysticks in minds and hands. some jumps become easier with an usb-controller. if you, like me, have a generic cheap one, i advise you add Hob to your non Steam games, with Big Picture and all. if needed, i recommend x360ce as an emulator, easy to install and run. feel free to hit questions if in need.
I have to wonder if the patches Panic Button made to the game as part of the Switch port's Definitive Edition also made it to the EGS release, since it came out not long after the Switch version. I don't find either studio credited there, just Gearbox. It doesn't seem like the Steam version has been updated since 2017, though.
I've played this on the switch with no issues recently and it's easily one of my favourite games from an artistic perspective. I say it's worth buying and playing for the experience now, is assume most of these issues have been resolved.
Man, this critique really makes me sad on a personal level. Why? You clearly can't deny the issues mentioned, but I had literally zero problems in my playthrough, resulting in one of my favorite experiences this year. The game felt incredibly polished to me, from the incredibly satisfying sounds, combat and animations to the fantastic level design. Interesting and kind of frustrating how this perception can drastically vary. The theme of healing and environmental care really resonated with me and the game became a warm blanket I eagerly returned to every day when I played it, because it is just so calm and satisfying to explore. Many people will never touch this game now because they think it is a buggy mess but it is really a game worth playing and full of heart.
For you it was, if the majority* experience game ruining bugs, it's his duty to report on that, and no one should be shafted by a broken product they paid for. I'm glad you enjoyed it however.
Yes of course, that's what makes me sad. The disparity of its artistic merit vs bugs that could just destroy it for you randomly.
I had issues with glitches but they were no where near as bad as Anderson's. The game is currently sitting at a 89% recommended on Steam. If those glitches were the majority i'd be way lower.
it's also been patched a bunch since janderson's playthroughs. i only experienced a few visual glitches during my playthrough over the last couple of days.
Your post made me decide to get it, thank you
I have no plan to play this game but it really looks like to have some great ideas. Given proper development it has the potential to be a masterpiece. What a shame.
I don't want to discredit Josephs review, some of those bugs were seriously annoying just by seeing them on video but I cannot say I share his experience. I played through the game to completion (100%) which took me like 12 hours and I only ever encountered a single obvious bug, the one with the fish following you around.
No teleporting enemies, no (unintentionally) unresponsive buttons, no missing ladders, nothing. Now I know that may not mean much but I really feel like he got the short end of the stick.
They are not closed yet and just today they released another patch. :p
Play it!! Finished this year 2020, the only bug I encountered is on 12:07 on this video, I just ignored that and kept playing withtout any issue. This game is wonderfull
@@rozuja awesome game
Kinda not sure why you used "It's like Zelda" in the title tho... it makes a interesting point at the beginning but became irrelevant to the topic 2 minutes into the video
Stelle Wind probably wanted to grab attention with the title to a wider audience
Stelle Wind click bait. Or if you're into marketing terms. It's called "branding"
It's still relevant but he doesn't have to remind us of the connection. He's already pointed it out and continues on with similarities through out his praise. He used it as a good opening and left it up to the audience to continue to draw connections to. If you rewatch it while comparing what he's saying to how Zelda handled it you'll see the connection continues.
In the playthrough he repeatedly stated, that people who had recommended this game to him unanimously have been claimingd that 'It's like Zelda', therefore Joseph's first time through the game was defined by this angle - He's been looking for similarities and differences between these two titles.
It's suits the nature of the unfinished game he talked about the whole video.
Wow, this was abit of a downer. But I think it needed to be. The disparity between the game that could have been and what is is huge, and a great shame that it will likely never be recovered.
Did you even play it?
No, because of repeated reports of exactly the kind of thing Joe goes into above. Also cos my laptop can hardly run 2d games let alone 3d. :P
I mean ... there are glitches, but this is Joseph Anderson. He critiques and his videos are mostly nothing but critique. He didn't focus on the positives nearly as much. It sounds way worse than it is because ... it's a critique. It's not meant to be balanced.
It's honestly a pretty great game. I'd give it a 8-8.5, I think a lot of the criticism is unjustified, or justified but very hyperbolic. And this is coming from a Joseph fanboy. I never ran into Joseph's glitches thank god. I will say that after reflecting on the game more, the problem was more so the boring combat and repetitive puzzles. But a lot of the puzzles are great, music is great, graphics are great. It's the kind of game that just gets a little worse near the end, but so do a lot of games. It's a great game still and I'd recommend it.
I mean, I got a lot of positives during the above video. Stuff about how involved the world changing is, the cleverness of the resulting level design, the *potential* depth of the combat mechanics (tho not realised) and he did say that the puzzles and secrets were the strongest aspect of the game. The only positive I see omitted is graphics+music, and the former at least can speak for themselves to show if you would like them or not.
Yeah lol I just edited that comment because what I meant is he didn't *focus on the positives as much as the negatives, not that he didn't state them. Which is fine because it's a *critique* but it does make it seem like a much worse game than it is. I just felt like throwing my hat in because I see a lot of people talking about the game as if it had failed, but as someone who went in blind I don't really think it did. It had a decent amount of missteps, but it's pretty great.
Thanks for the subtitles.
For who doesn' t speak english very well like me subtitles are really useful.
In case you care:
*For those who don't understand...
What ever language you speak, as a native English speaker from the USA who has lived in close proximity or within a Spanish speaking country, The only Spanish I ever learned was to order food from restaurants or day to day conversation. You know more than enough to communicate to English speakers.
Watching you on twitch definitely helped with the break between videos, but getting the notification still gets me excited.
10:15 That's what happened! I SWEAR I drug that box all the way to the square the first time I encountered it, then when nothing happened I wrote it off as a "oh this was just an optional side-path", got the extra collectible in this room and went on with my life. Except that resulted in like 20 minutes of not knowing what to do until I inevitably went back down there to test my assumptions and lo and behold, the elevator activated.
Something like that could have been very easily fixed with better colors on that platform to convey that it's actually a switch. I count myself lucky that I didn't encounter as many awful bugs as you did, but they were there. 15:10 is another one I SORT of encountered, but when I encountered it I actually tried to jump off there, but got the same effect of no animation and just a respawn. That spot is just weird I guess?
I also had some terrible stuttering that seemed to be endemic among 10xx series nVidia owners.
It's hard to say of my opinion of Hob would be more negative if I ran into more of these issues, but based on my experience, Hob is definitely worth a play, even if only for just the feeling of wonder that you mentioned in the beginning.
ingeniousclown Gaming b
*drag
*dragged
Im sorry, you drugged an innocent box?
After having watched ~15 of his videos, I truly believe that Joseph Anderson represents the new golden standard in games journalism.
This is not, to me, games journalism. This is a philosophical/critique commentary thesis on a game.
That's fair. I still think there are enough parallels between those, that if anything, games journalists can learn a few things from what Joe is doing.
"...if anything, games journalists can learn a few things from what Joe is doing."
Absolutely.
The only example of an actual game journalist I know of is some of Kotaku's writers (Jason Schreier comes to mind) and George Weidman aka Super Bunnyhop (highly recommend his channel on RUclips).
@@Rickbearcat yes and that's what journalism is. Or what it often is. Journalism doesn't just mean reporting the latest news or doing reviews on the latest games. It can also mean doing editorials, analyses of historical events or when it comes to games analyses of older games. It can be a far more sweeping thing like an entire book on the history of something, or about Al particular scientific topic perhaps. What Joseph is doing is absolutely games journalism. And there's quite a few great journalists doing the same thing to a similar quality level on RUclips, such as Super Bunnyhop which Joseph has said in other videos that he is a fan of.
Wait 2017?
Why is this now recommended?
I missed like 3 years not just few months XDD
aka Hob's Probs
What a missed opportunity
RIP Runic
Came here to post this.
Also after watching their documentary, it was even more heartbreaking.
Huh, I personally loved Hob, and I must be EXTREMELY lucky, because I have experienced none of this. I really don't know how the planets aligned to give you the worst time, haha
The Demopan yeah i dont remember noticing any Real bugs either
because this video is from 2017 they obviously had the time to patch those things
@@Cosmiichu but if the studio shut down, who was patching it?
How can you not experience the lack of bosses and poor enemy variety?
@@Mixu. I think Panic Button patched issues when porting it to Switch. This would not influence the Steam version, which hasn't been updated since 2017. The EGS version might be using the patches from the Switch version; I'm not sure.
Great review. Just got finished playing through Hob today (28.01.18) and thankfully, it seems like almost all of these bugs have been fixed. At least I never encountered a bug that would prevent me from progressing through the game. The popping in and out of environmental objects and enemy models is also something I never noticed. It's an amazing game now that it plays right!
I truly love the way you look at gameplay, story and the problems, strengths, etc. This is now my go to channel for if I want to try something out or not. Looking forward to more.
I can tell you how great your content is.
I am used to just jump to the middle of the video and finish it from there.
Your videos.. after doing the same thing, i jump to the very begining and watch the whole thing AGAIN.
"... or even an ambienr sound slider." Joe you gotta know that some things are wishful thinking, at best. Keep ideas like that on the downlow or they will call you crazy.
But the ambient sounds! W-w-we neeeed the AMBIENT SOUNDS!
I love this kind of graphic style, much better than cheap 3D that tries to be Real And looks bad af or pixel art that is everywhere right now
Pixel art can be good or bad. Sadly, while the 8 and 16 bit era tried to make the most of their limited ressources I feel many modern pixel art games just try to do as little as possible and call it stylized.
I like most pixel art, as long as they put actual effort in.
Two videos with only week and a half in between them. I hope this keeps up
Aside from randomly dying once, I played through this on the PC and PS4 and never had any of the bugs you had. Just frame drops and crashes before they patched it. I found the combat wasn't the greatest or all that deep but was still much better than the majority of games these days.
wolfflow ya I never had any glitches either
Man runic games was great, and this caught me so off guard and I was so sad with how it all ended.
I remember TotalBiscuits coverage of Torchlight 1/2 and I remember being so hyped for T2, playing with friends and by myself for hours and hours and modding the game... Needless to say I was excited for this new project and I was very sad how the game didn't seem finished and how Runic died right after it.
Rest in peace, you'll always have a place in my heart
17:43 "There's no lockon while fighting"
Yes, there is. o_O
sllypper hahaha I read this right when he said it in the video and it made me laugh to see the face your wrote
@@ethanfamiano56 Yo wtf same thing happened to me too
A video right before school? What a nice treat!
I'm heartbroken that Runic shut down. I was frustrated by the issues that Hob has, but I'm in love with the world they created for Torchlight and Hob. I want more from this universe, and I doubt I'm ever going to get that.
My personal subtitle for Hob is "ok, what there fuck did that do?" I said that after like 50% of the switches I flipped, not because I couldn't see what the switch did exactly, but because I had trouble understanding the ramifications of each change I made to the environment. This all clicked for me around the time I finished the reservoir, but that's like halfway through the game. I'm not sure if that's a flaw or not. It's just something I noticed.
I do have one big problem with the game and that's that it's really linear. I kept trying to solve puzzle zones out of order, thinking the game was more like hollow knight than portal, especially the starting zone. I can't tell you how much time I wasted trying to purify that zone. I'd come back to it after every zone I finished, hoping one of those switches or arm upgrades would in some way help. Turns out you can't finish it until after the reservoir.
Good video as always Mr Anderson. Please keep doing what you've been doing.
Wow Jossie, you never stop amazing me with the quality of your content. It's not often i can stand long critiques of games I don't even have.
The little slide show you did of examples of the large amount of platformers released contained so many games I hold near and dear it just assaulted me with adrenaline. Hyper Light Drifter, Shovel Knight, Dead Cells, Rain World (I love this one in particular), Ori and the Blind Forest, Owlboy are the ones I recall the most.
Your videos are seriously something else! I wish more youtubers gave such in-depth critiques...
That stream plug was so smooth! I am in awe!
17:40 There is lock-on while fighting. The game tells you about it, it's just a pain in the ass to trigger. I turned it on once by accident and was annoyed since it stopped me from sprinting. You do it by clicking the left stick or hitting Tab if using a keyboard. But yeah, the fact that you didn't even know speaks about how well implemented it is into the loop.
Just in time for my tea, perfect!
Its SO HARD not to watch a full video from you because of your pure video game genius,and it almost kinda sucks when you make me interested in a game!
So now we are guaranteed to never get a Torchlight 3...damn. I mean, I did not like TL2 but I loved the first game.
Bad news from the future, pal.
I think what you added to it regarding Runic really worked well for the video. All of the issues really made sense within the context of that framework.
"a mechanical handful of bosses"
I appreciate this, I notice you.
Love your stuff, one day I hope to make a game that you will notice and critique.
Brilliant Video as always Joe!
You said in your stream of Hob, and presumably others, that you were worried the viewers of the streams would get bored if you just solely focused on playing the game (with minimal interaction with the chat) and commentated on your first thoughts. After watching your stream of Hob, and then this video. I can safely say that I think it's a good idea! I enjoyed hearing your first thoughts while watching the stream, and then your more refined ideas put into this video. It was a good one. Thanks very much for all the hard work!
I just played Hob myself and only encountered one of your said Bugs where an enemy was invincible in his default position. Other than that i had an amazing experience.
My favorite youtuber strikes yet again.
I live for your content man
THANK YOU for your statement in the intro about the old-school Zelda formula. Without watching your video I made a similar argument in my analysis of Alundra, an underappreciated Zelda-like game for the PSX. Both that game and Hob seem to want to develop the ideas further rather than abandon or change them into what Zelda has become now (Dark Souls/puzzler in the style of a Ubisoft game). Both ideas are good and can be fun, but sometimes I really enjoy the old-school Zelda formula and feel a lot more could be done with that.
Nice job being featured pyrocynical, I've been watching your channel for over a year now and its great.
One of your best videos I think
thank you for a recommendation, it looks like further development of Bastion ideas, love it
Congratulations for the 200k subscribers man!
Another fantastic piece of work. You can definitely see your video editing improving too.
17:42 there actually is a lock-on in the game, it just doesn't tell you in any sort of tutorial. it is however mentioned in one(or more, i'm not sure) hint(s) which talks about lock-on combat and it is also in the controls within the options. (the default button for it is the left stick)
4,300 dollars a month from a channel with just over 200 thousand subscribers, that's fucking insane,
not only is that an absurdly livable income, but it also shows how dedicated the viewers are to this channel, it takes a level of commitment for this kind of content and i appreciate the fact that so many others understand that and show it willingly in their patreon subscriptions
glad you are making enough money to support you and your family now, along with being able to pursue youtube and upload more frequently, patreon has done this channel a lot of good
Lots of love Joseph
I wonder what you'd think of Obduction, from Cyan Games. I mean, its yet another Myst-like, but actually made by the people who made Myst. Personally, I really liked it, and I really want to see your thoughts on it, as I loved your review of The Witness, which shares a similar feeling.
That would be because they they had the same art director, Eric A. Anderson. I don't doubt there was more cross-pollination between the two games than just the art and world design.
I enjoyed Obduction apart from the terribly designed "alien numbers" puzzle. On my playthrough I managed to brute force my way through the bridge sections without understanding entirely how they worked and ended up completely stuck in a section that didn't allow me to return to anywhere until I solved a puzzle with a very specific solution. So I couldn't go back to somewhere I could learn how to solve the puzzle unless I solved it first, which is a mind-boggling oversight.
Oh, and the load times were atrocious (at least at release) and made all the teleporter style puzzles a massive pain.
Also, if you haven't seen it, Matthewmatosis has a similar style of game critique and has a review of Obduction on his channel if you're interested.
Love your content! Keep up the great work!
Awesome work, as usual!
Laughed at "maybe even and ambient sound slider"
I'm really excited about your super mario review
Playing it again now I think most of the bugs are fixed and tho it doesn't change the core problems with the game it will always remain a great experience for me... One part because of the story of the studio and of what this game could have been and one part is the exploration of the world... I am not saying everyone should or will love it but I am saying do give it a try.. You can tell some people made it with passion
I love your video. You are the darksouls of videogame critques.
gotta love *SUDDENLY INTENSE WALKING*
Hey Joseph, just to say I really enjoy the slower pace of your commentary delivery in recent videos; I assume this is an intentional change and, for me anyway, i find it much better. I found the pace of some your earlier commentaries a bit stressful! Great job on your work and keep it up
As soon as I saw that Runic Games was behind the game, I knew I would have to give it a shot. Loved their work on the Torchlight games.
I've never played Hob, it's not really my genre, but my dad bought it way on sale for the Switch, and my brother played it through, Twice. He loved it, I'm not sure if many of the glitches were fixed for a switch release (though I recall once the game suddenly lost all his saves and he had to restart during his second playthrough). But I think it's, nice, that even a 'game that could have been' as you describe can be a game that *Is* to people.
At 17:45 you state that there's no lock-on while fighting in this game, but there is; it's bound to the click on the left stick.
23:50: "...or even an ambient sound slider." - Savage. :O
Love that subtle humor. Amazing video - as always! :) And while I adore your long form videos and sometimes even sort of commented walkthroughs, I also really like this short, condensed format. And how close this critique is timewise to the release of the game, so it's relevant for the short attention span and cycle in modern media. Doing more, but shorter videos on games that gained a lot of attention/hype and are still worth a critique might be a good way forward. Saving the long form for very special games. And who knows, hopefully you'll earn enough money via Patreon and Twitch one day, that you can pay someone to do some channel work or even video editing, so you can focus on playing the games, thinking about them and writing your scripts for the critiques. You would really deserve it.
HNNNNGGGHHHH i'm so excited you have a new video
Great as always!
For the record, there's a bunch of top down zelda-like indie games.
Ittle Dew (1 + 2)
Shipwreck
Oceanhorn
Sword and Board.
Hack N Slash
Those from the top of my head.
Great video as always baby
On the glitches - I speedrunned this game for a while, and I never encountered any of the bugs featured in the video specifically. I did encounter a lot of softlocks where the trigger for an event would not happen, but that was almost always because of a sequence break.
Love your reviews. Thank you for this. Typically I have already played the games you review and I really appreciate your analysis as someone who has gone through the games. But for this Ive been on the fence on getting hob, looked great, but this critique was something I was worried about and I am really glad I just saw your video. I may pick it up on a Steam X-Mas sale or something now.
Joseph, you should defiantly give Darkwood a go. I think you would enjoy the mystery around it and give an amazing
in depth review on it, especially about the lore and stuff.
This game is on my wishlist since I first saw it, but I wasn't sure if I should buy it. Four minutes in and this has convinced me that despite everything, I want to experience this world. Hope I can come back soon to finish the video! Don't want spoilers~
15:09 The dreaded death trees. I found those in mine. I got soft locked in the final boss, I killed all of the enemies and the eye switch wouldnt activate.
I agree those kinds of bugs in a game structured like this are a particularly glaring issue. If a game is going to lead you via breadcrumbs, rather than give you an idea of the larger picture, then when an event doesn't trigger you're left with nothing and no overarching path of reason to clue you in on what's going on. Game looks great and appears to play great overall though, hopefully they can iron out the issues.
Edit: Whoops studio closure, never mind :(
I loved Hob. It was an amazing experience. Especially the ending. This is a game you for which you would root for a sequel. It's really sad that it didn't get a sequel. A few more boss battles would've been an interesting inclusion
Cool Game! I'll pick this up once they fix the bugs. Thanks Joseph for bringing this game to my attention.
I hope you will find solace in knowledge that I personaly didnt encouter ANY bugs, glitches, or crashes. Eat the whole game in only two sessions. Truly a breathtaking experience.
(just start watching you, you truly have a talent to evaluate games! keep up the good work)
only honest and thorough review i’ve found on youtube. just picked up the definitive edition on switch, having never heard of the game before, and was immediately captivated...then sadly disappointed once i got to the “endgame”. you are absolutely right about the waypoints, about halfway through it’s like the game was just trying to get it all over with already, and just blazes right through to the end, rushing through the corruption-clearing, the collection of those four little orbs (which i hardly realized i had even collected, since the game gives you no context except to direct you to them), and then to the finale. it is clearly unfinished. i didn’t experience the crazier bugs you mentioned, so perhaps they were fixed to some degree, but i still experienced many minor bugs. honestly so sad because it feels like there was soooo much more planned, and the game has more than enough soul to deserve it. still enjoyable, but too bad.
Aw man, I thought "Hob Critique" was the name of the game itself. I was prepared to enjoy a game about comparing different styles of oven.
Just finished the game, there wasn't any bugs at all. Maybe they patched it up? (sry for bad English)
late comer to this video. i played this game on switch in 2018. had pretty much no bugs so it was a wonderful experience
Interesting how you explain the potential in Hob's approach to many different types of evasion, because a year and a half later, Sekiro seems to provide a lot of that kind of feeling with deflections, evades, and responses to various "perilous attacks".
Me: Movies are too long! I don't have patience to sit down for so much time!
Also me: **spends an entire afternoon watching reviews of games I'm never going to play**
Totally agree the glitches fuck with the puzzle solving, unfortunate since the game has so many good ideas
Woah. I've played hob about 5 or 6 times now, 2 of which were directly after launch, and I've even done a speedrun. I have never once encountered a bug or glitch (that I didn't make happen myself while speedrunning). That's crazy. I guess I should count myself super lucky...
i love this game, recently cleared this game with no bug at all!
Greetings Joseph! I've recently stumbled upon your videos (aka video novellas) and I am a big fan of the content. As a life-long video game enthusiast I can safely say this is something the current review industry grievously needs. Now, I realize you do much more than simply review games, but the term “review” is probably the best description I can use when comparing to what is created by the majority of the mainstream today.
While I realize that not every outlet has the resources to create a 1 to 2+ game analysis on every major release (nor would I even desire this), it is safe to say the video review industry has gone in a direction that benefits game publisher and harms the end user, and yes, even the developers. More and more outlets have watered down their review material to 5 minutes or less and tend to primarily focus on the pros of a title while simultaneously failing to do more than briefly mentioning any cons, if they even do that much. This offense is so extreme in some cases that that I often find myself wondering if they are reviewing a “Game Feature” list the developers provided to them rather than playing and analyzing their own full experience with the game. I'm not sure if this is because reviewers are afraid to go against what most gamers/critics believe about a game for fear of losing viewers or if there is some deeper conspiracy involving game publishers showing up on reviewers’ doorsteps with nondescript money sacks and a legally binding contract that has 9.5/10 written into the agreement. I know the latter sounds like something from a conspiracy theorist, but it always seems like the more popular a website gets over time the easier it is for AAA companies to get near perfect scores. Many people forget that 15 years ago a perfect 10 score rarely existed on IGN. Now they're handed out like participation trophies at the Kindergarten Olympics.
It goes without saying that now there is zero incentive for a publisher to allow their developers enough time and creative freedom to fix the glaring issues in future titles. Yes, I do blame the publisher over the developer because no honest game creator would want to create a shitty game. If you work on something day in and day out for years, you really want it to be good. Just imagine where we would be today if game reviewers focused primarily on the cons? I bet games today would be so incredible that there would be a “harder than life” difficulty setting and a “realer than life” graphic setting. You would probably even be able to create game review videos INSIDE the game itself. Oh, what a world that would be!
Anyway, thank you for the great content! I know I could have just said that and saved you a great deal of time, but due to the length of your videos I feel you really deserve to have to read a full “feature length” comment. Whatever you do, just keep this shit coming please! 😊
Looks like a really fun game, I’ll have to pick it up now.
Just played it and i love it!
17:44
"There's no lock on while fighting"
That's not quite true. If you want to lock on to an enemy, it is doable by pushing down on the right analog stick if you're using a controller.
If you want to look at an indie zelda-like I'd recommend the 'ittle dew' series.
for me when I played Hob more recently the glitches and bugs that you experienced seemed to have mostly been fixed or I just didn't get them on my switch version of the game though not all as I have experienced one or two of this type. This left a whole new kind of glitch or bug for me instead, where the really weird geometry of the game ether seemed like it should have been possible when it just doesn't, or when it does let me do something in a really buggy way making me think solutions to puzzles are about climbing up a weird piece of geometry only for the next part not to work as the game didn't expect me to reach that point or just get there that early in the puzzle. There were some other weird stuff to go on with general bugs but those were the main ones I experienced.